The Biggest Oxymoron since “Government Help”: Tech Support
Let me begin this post by telling you all that Pharmacy Chick never wanted to own a home computer. She was dragged into the information age, kicking and screaming. I have an answering machine only because I got it free as a door prize. I own a palm but it is usually dead in my purse. If it weren’t for cable channels over 13, I’d still own my old TV with knobs–remember knobs? I am simply not a technophile–if anything, I am a techno-PHOBE. (the fact that I blog is amazing when you consider this factoid)
It was only because EVERYTHING was going “WWW” that I finally relented and purchased a computer. It was the biggest piece of junk and the hugest source of frustration that I could ever have inflicted upon myself, aside from being a pharmacist! To keep this post under 50,000 words, I will spare you the details, but suffice to say that I was doomed from the start–it wouldn’t power up. Before I ever saw a Windows splash screen, I had the tower box apart: the power button was never hooked up. It went downhill from there. Thankfully I had purchased the extended warranty because I used it extensively. By the time they finally replaced the unit, I had probably used up 10 computers worth of parts and labor.
Fast forward now 10 years:
My first computer has been long since dumped. I moved on to a different brand name. For the most part it has run flawlessly….until a few days ago. My notebook started to freeze up. DOA, with whatever I was doing on the screen just frozen in time. Then, it wouldn’t reboot unless I whapped the keyboard. The Caps-Lock LED would blink 10 times and die. It appeared that motion was causing the unit to freeze. I did what every good computer owner would do: I called Tech Support.
What evil demon possessed me to do that? First off I got somebody in some far off country. I won’t say which country so I am not labeled as a hate monger, but suffice to say it wasn’t a local-boy. His English was spotty at best. I think these people do tech support because they hate you and I. Not only did I have to repeat everything twice, HE insisted on repeating everything back to me– ME: my computer freezes. HIM: so, you are saying your computer freezes? you get the gist of it–over and over. Computer sadism: inflict as much pain as possible without actually doing anything to actually fix the problem.
He held me hostage for over 90 minutes. After having me run the gauntlet of worthless diagnostics, I finally gave up. It was almost midnight (what did he care? it was lunch time there!). The next day I gingerly rebooted my computer and placed it on a hard surface. If it moved, it froze. I decided that internet computer forums might give me more information than this dude did. You’d of thought this had never happened before this brand of notebook! When he learned my notebook was 4 years old, he implied it was time to replace it. I paid almost $1600 for this thing: 4 years does not make it a dinosaur!
An aside: I learned from my techno-geek friends who helped me during my last computer nightmare that Tech Support’s cop-out fix to get you off the phone is to advise you to “reformat your hard drive”. It doesn’t matter the problem. Blue Screen of Death? Reformat your hard drive. Number Lock LED burned out? Reformat your hard drive. Its like killing a fly with a sledge hammer. No bloody way am I reformatting my hard drive so don’t even ask.
I found tons of information on the internet…as long as I didn’t nudge or move one molecule on my notebook…or ZZZZT it would freeze up again. I didn’t feel so alone, as it was a fairly well reported problem, so I was irritated as ever that I received no useful information from Mr. No-help. I gathered that either my RAM was bad or one of the slots for the RAM was bad.
Armed with that information, I drove to my friendly big box electronics store and scored some memory. Pharmacy chick wishes that getting BRAIN memory was this cheap and easy! I put the new memory in the first slot and booted ‘er up. It worked for about 2 minutes and when I moved the unit-ZZZZT DEAD. Then I moved it to the second slot and I have tossed my notebook around for about 2 hours without dying.
Chick is not assuming that all is well. BUT, all is certainly improved….at the moment. I got 1G of RAM zipping me all over the internet now and I learned that I will not die a painful death by opening the back of my notebook.
So if I disappear for a while, you can assume my fix……didn’t!
Please God, let this fix work.
Tags: general junk, personal life, rambling, ranting | |